1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to unscrambling conveyors, and more particularly, to a conveyor system capable of aligning and separating diverse shapes of containers, such as cylindrical bottles and rectangular cartons.
2. Prior Art
There are many types of conveyor systems which have been designed for use in sorting containers, such as bottles, and aligning them for inspection or further processing. Such systems are further capable of establishing a spacing between adjacent such containers as is needed for a given process. These conveyors are used extensively in the liquid bottling industry, such as breweries or soft drink bottling facilities. Such a device is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,142,639.
Further, similar conveyor systems have been utilized in that portion of the packaging industry where rectangular cross section containers, such as boxes and cartons, need to be aligned and separated with a spacing between adjacent cartons for subsequent processing or filling in a manner similar to bottling operations. Such a device is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,739.
However, both of these above referred to types of devices are only designed to separate a given shape and range of sizes of containers, such as cylindrical containers, and are not designed to separate such containers from other shapes of containers, such as cartons or boxes. Thus, in those cases where there is a need for distinguishing between cartons and bottles and aligning the various shapes in spaced relation for inspection or subsequent processing, conveyor systems of the above described types have not proven effective.
Until recently, there has been very little need for a conveyor system which was capable of sorting, aligning and separating such diverse shapes as bottles and cartons. However, with the increased awareness of environmental concerns which has resulted in a desire to reduce the use of non-returnable containers and encourage the use of returnable containers, such as in the soft drink industry, a demand for such sorting systems has increased. For example, it is necessary to provide a system at grocery stores and the like, where an individual desiring to return empty bottles can position them on a conveyor, both as individual bottles and in their original carry away cartons of four, six, or eight packs as are currently being used, without the need for removing each of the bottles from the cartons in which they are returned. These bottles and cartons are then scanned by electronic equipment which determines the sizes and numbers of bottles and determines the amount of refund for bottle deposits to be given the customer. This requires a conveyor system which is capable of sorting out cartons of various lengths and widths from bottles placed adjacent to them on the conveyor and which bottles likewise have different diameters, but are of generally cylindrical configuration.
One of the main difficulties with prior art conveyors of the general type described above, is that when both cartons and bottles are placed on the infeed conveyor at random positions as is commonly encountered, the cartons block the movement of the bottles and prevent them from being correctly positioned for scanning inspection, etc.
Such prior art devices generally employ a plurality of individual conveyor belts disposed in parallel side-by-side abutting relation with a diverting bar extending at an angle transversely across the plurality of belts so that objects placed on the infeed conveyor are progressively moved across from belt to belt until they reach the exit conveyor for subsequent processing. In addition, the plurality of the belts are usually driven at progressively higher speeds with the infeed belt being driven at the slowest speed and the exit belt being driven at the highest speed. The reason for this is that the infeed of objects is usually accomplished at a lower rate than is desirable for subsequent processing and thus the objects must be brought up to speed before they enter the processing device.
However, there has been no recognition of the advantages of using progressively higher speed belts for the purpose of separating bottles and cartons, and even further, there has been no recognition of the advantages of varying the widths and speeds of the belts and the angle at which the objects to be aligned and separated are passed across the progressively increasing speed belts, in order to assist in separating diverse shapes of containers such as bottles and cartons.